Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Rakuten shared the following metrics for its mobile segment for Q4 and full year 2022:

In FY2022, the Mobile segment recorded revenue of 368.7 billion yen, a significant increase of 62.0% YoY. Operating losses of 492.8 billion yen were recorded. After peaking in Q1 FY2022, operating losses continue to contract due to the increased number of paying customers in line with the end of the campaign offering one-year of free mobile service, increased ARPU (average revenue per user) due to subscribers transitioning to the new Rakuten UN-LIMIT VII service plan, reduced roaming costs as the Rakuten network coverage area expands and other factors.

100% of Rakuten Mobile subscribers became paying customers as of September, and as Rakuten UN-LIMIT VII’s essentially free-of-charge campaign came to a close at the end of October, ARPU increased from 837 yen in Q1 FY2022, before the announcement of the new service plan, to 1,805 yen in Q4 FY2022. Average monthly data usage also increased significantly from 9.5 GB in December 2021, before the new service plan was announced, to 18.4 GB in December 2022, contributing to increased ARPU.

The total number of MNO and MVNO subscribers reached 5.06 million as of the end of December 2022. New MNO subscribers have shown a net increase since December 2022.

The average number of Rakuten services used per Rakuten Mobile subscriber increased by 2.61 services, as Rakuten Mobile continues to promote cross-use within the Rakuten Ecosystem. For subscribers, the average annual purchase amount on Rakuten Ichiba increased 49% after subscribing to Rakuten Mobile.

The number of 4G outdoor base stations exceeded 52,003 as of December 31, 2022. The company aims to have 60,000 base stations in operation by the end of FY2023. In addition, the number of outdoor 5G base stations (outdoor Sub6 macro base stations) increased to 7,058 nationwide.

The company announced the full-scale launch of the Rakuten Mobile Business Plan, a mobile carrier service for business customers, from January 30, 2023. More than 600 businesses are already using the service, and the number of business subscribers is forecast to continue to increase.

Rakuten Symphony revenue increased significantly to US$231 million Q4 FY2022, up US$141 million over the previous quarter. Cumulative sales revenue since launch reached US$548 million.

https://convergedigest.com/...-now-at-5-million-subscribers-in-japan/  

A gigantic change in the Operating Cash Flow of the Non-Financial Buisinesses

Operating Cash Flow of the Non-Financial Buisinesses was positive with 11.5 JPY bn in Q4/2022 against a negative cash flow of 334.3 JPY bn divide through 3 = 111.4 JPY billion in the average of the first three quarters of 2022

Cash Flow Breakdown: January 2022 – December 2022: Operating Cash Flow = - 322.8 JPY bn
Cash Flow Breakdown: January 2022 – September 2022: Operating Cash Flow = - 334.3 JPY bn

Result is a positive Operating Cash Flow of 11.5 JPY bn in Q4/2024, if you subtract -334.3 JPY bn from -322.3 JPY bn.

If you divide the negative cash flow of - 334.3 JPY bn of the first three quarters Q1/22 – Q3/22 through 3 = -111.4 JPY billion in the average of the first three quarters of 2022.

https://global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/documents/results/  

4-fold number of paying subscribers of Rakuten Mobile or a plus of 294%

At the end of January 2023 Rakuten Mobile has about 4.5 million paying subscribers – that is comparing with the year before the 4-fold or a plus of 294%.

Source: Own transcript of the Conference Call  

Rakuten TV, mainly in the European market, has 70 million users, a plus of 48.3% Y-o-Y.

Source: Own transcript of the Conference Call of Rakuten  

Rakuten Viki has 66.8 million registered users, a plus of 27.2% Y-o-Y.

Source: Own transcript of the Conference Call  

Rakuten Rewards (former Ebates) has a non-GAAP operating income of $62.8 million, a plus of 12% Y-o-Y.

Source: Own transcript of the Conference Call

Value by a P/E of 25 of comparable companies = about $ 1.6 billion.  

15 billion yen multiplicated with 12 = 180 billion yen = $ 1.34 billion

As Rakuten expands its independent wireless network, it is weaning itself off network capacity borrowed from rival KDDI. When this is coupled with the reduced capital spending, the company expects to save roughly 15 billion yen a month on network operation costs by year-end.“

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/...l-tie-ups-to-turn-finances-around  

There were a lot of plus signs in the Rakuten Group presentation of its FY2022 figures today.

POSTED ON FEBRUARY 14, 2023 BY ROBERT CURRAN

Rakuten is an internet company, working at internet speed, in an internet way. Its view of telecom is fundamentally different than how conventional telcos tend to regard themselves – even if some of its telco metrics are perfectly familiar: population coverage, ARPU, number of base stations. As an established group of businesses, in everything from advertising to travel, and fintech to fashion, Rakuten has more scope than a conventional telco for creativity in how it acquires, retains, and creates monetizable value from, its customers.

https://appledoreresearch.com/2023/02/14/rakuten-group-results-fy2022/  

„Rakuten’s Advertising business has bucked the global trend, with 16% growth compared to an international fall in YoY growth rate (around 4.3%).“

https://appledoreresearch.com/2023/02/14/rakuten-group-results-fy2022/  

Why Rakuten Mobile, which remains in the red, says Mr Mikitani is boasting that it is aiming for a profit of one month in 2023 (1/3 page)-ITmedia Mobile

https://www.newsdirectory3.com/...th-in-2023-1-3-page-itmedia-mobile/  

So, my first point here is the Rakuten Bank’s IPO, this was already announced. It’s on process and we would like to work on that. And then next one is Rakuten Securities Holdings’ IPO. Before the end of this fiscal year, we plan to make that happen. And other than that, parent company and subsidiary, the company based strategic business alliance and capital, the range to be flexibility considered so that we will be able to have a healthy balance so that we can grow in the Rakuten Mobile’s profitability, the structure improvement is what I have already covered before.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/...-q4-2022-earnings-call-transcript  

By Keith Dyer 14 February 2023

The Truth About Open RAN - the highlights.

https://the-mobile-network.com/2023/02/...s-the-truth-about-open-ran/  

einmalige Kaufgelegeneheit, da die Ergebnisse aus Q/4 ein so dramatische Verbesserung aufzeigen, wie man sie kaum erwarten konnte - damit meine ich vor allem die weiter oben aufgezeigte Zahlen zum operativen Cash Flow:

A gigantic change in the Operating Cash Flow of the Non-Financial Buisinesses

Operating Cash Flow of the Non-Financial Buisinesses was positive with 11.5 JPY bn in Q4/2022 against a negative cash flow of 334.3 JPY bn divide through 3 = 111.4 JPY billion in the average of the first three quarters of 2022

Cash Flow Breakdown: January 2022 – December 2022: Operating Cash Flow = - 322.8 JPY bn
Cash Flow Breakdown: January 2022 – September 2022: Operating Cash Flow = - 334.3 JPY bn

Result is a positive Operating Cash Flow of 11.5 JPY bn in Q4/2024, if you subtract -334.3 JPY bn from -322.3 JPY bn.

If you divide the negative cash flow of - 334.3 JPY bn of the first three quarters Q1/22 – Q3/22 through 3 = -111.4 JPY billion in the average of the first three quarters of 2022.

global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/documents/results/  

Rakuten’s initial plan for mobile had been a 7-year buildout.

Instead, Rakuten accelerated that plan, based on a cloud-native and open vision, resulting in a higher rate of spend over a shorter period. Its mobile strategy now enters “phase 2” – establishing the profit structure of the business now that the buildout is largely complete with 98%+ coverage. Rakuten Mobile’s “phase 3” will be accelerating customer acquisition (massively increasing its rivals’ churn) to become Japan’s #1 mobile service provider.

https://appledoreresearch.com/2023/02/14/rakuten-group-results-fy2022/
 

Rakuten’s Symphony platform continued to show strong growth through the end of last year, and is set to underpin Rakuten Mobile’s 5G build-out transformation.

Rakuten Symphony generated $476 million in revenues last year, bolstered by 14 global contracts, including deals with AT&T, Cisco, Nokia, and Qualcomm. That number is the same as it reported during its previous financial quarter, though Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony CEO Tareq Amin explained during the company’s latest earnings call that the vendor was sitting on eight additional contracts that were in “final stages of closure.”

Amin also stated Rakuten Symphony ended 2022 with a sales pipeline in excess of $4 billion in revenues, which was significantly more than the $3.1 billion it had at the end of its third-fiscal quarter of 2022.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RakutenUndervalued/...orm_continued_to_show/
 

Viber is installed on 90 percent of all active mobile phone numbers in Serbia, 96 percent in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, 86 percent in Albania while 84 percent of mobile phone numbers in North Macedonia have this app installed.

Feb 8, 2023

Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia and the company Rakuten Viber will be strategic partners in the development of services for small and medium-sized enterprises in Serbia with the aim of digitizing their business, it was agreed today at the meeting of Marko Čadež, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia (CCIS) and Atanas Raykov, Senior Director Growth Top Markets at Rakuten Viber.

New business functionalities of the application, "Business inbox", "Commercial orders" and "Viber for small and medium-sized enterprises", have been presented by representatives of the Rakuten Viber company.

Atanas Rajkov, Senior Director Growth Top Markets at Rakuten Viber pointed out that Viber is installed on 90 percent of all active mobile phone numbers in Serbia, 96 percent in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, 86 percent in Albania while 84 percent of mobile phone numbers in North Macedonia have this app installed.

"In Serbia, a million users use our application every day. In addition to personalized users, we also work on developing services for large, small, and medium-sized companies. "Serbia is a market of key importance for Viber, and when working on the development of new functionalities and solutions, we strive to take into account the experiences of millions of users, as well as numerous partners, clients, and institutions from your country," said Rajkov.

https://en.pks.rs/news/ccis-and-viber-to-start-a-strategic-partnership  

New Year Conference 2023 Unites Rakuten Ichiba and Merchants

The Rakuten New Year Conference, one of Rakuten Ichiba's biggest annual events, was held again this year! Check out highlights from Mickey's speech on the positive effects of Rakuten Mobile for the Rakuten Ecosystem and Rakuten Ichiba merchants, as well as comments from merchants who attended in-person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0nAeqHRsI4  

Why Rakuten’s Symworld Cloud beats Red Hat OpenShift and VMware Tanzu

Rakuten targets big edge deployments with Symworld Cloud

By Yann Serra, LeMagITAntony Adshead, Storage Editor

Published: 08 Feb 2023 10:00

Japanese giant Rakuten bought Kubernetes management platform Robin.io and put it in 50,000-plus telco antennas. Now it aims Symworld Cloud at enterprise edge deployments

“Our competitor’s approach is to manage application instances in a uniform hardware cluster with one type of CPU, GPU, storage and network card,” said Seetala. “Ours is exposed in the same way from different hardware so that applications get the maximum performance as if written expressly for them.
“Take for example these case in telecoms, when an OpenRAN deployment wants to validate a communication in less than 40μs. It is simply impossible to do if your software code doesn’t take into account the type of network or FPGA accelerator in your equipment. But you have 800 hardware variants in your antenna park. What do you do? Write and deploy 800 versions of your code? That’s what you have to do with our competitors. We, however, expose our underlying hardware in a universal manner.”

https://twitter.com/RobinWuzz/with_replies
 

Rakuten Advertising Adopts SpringServe Tiles to Strengthen Impact of Ad-Supported Campaigns on Rakuten TV

LONDON, Feb. 16, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SpringServe, the leading independent TV ad serving platform now part of Magnite (Nasdaq: MGNI), today announced that Rakuten Advertising has adopted the SpringServe Tiles solution to strengthen the impact of ad-supported campaigns on Rakuten TV. As one of the leading VOD platforms in Europe combining TVOD, SVOD and AVOD services, integrating the SpringServe Tiles format within Rakuten TV will allow brands to balance personalisation and monetisation, while preserving the user experience.

https://www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/...campaigns-on-rakuten-tv
 

Feb 01, 2023 With new name, Rakuten Drive team will provide more reliable, efficient cloud service. After joining Rakuten Symphony in 2021, Rakuten decided to rebrand it to advance into faster and safer cloud service.

Users can trust and use by adding Rakuten's technology, reliability, security, and ecosystem linkage with services in order to officially enlarge business in Japanese market.

In addition, through Sendy's Rakuten rebranding, we will accelerate the continuous development and service provision so that we can safely and efficiently manage valuable personal/business data from freelancers, small business owners to large companies especially in Japanese market.

(1) RobinWuzz on Twitter: "Sendy is reborn as Rakuten Drive! Feb 01, 2023 With new name, Rakuten Drive team will provide more reliable, efficient cloud service. After joining Rakuten Symphony in 2021, Rakuten decided to rebrand it to advance into faster and safer cloud service. https://t.co/dQdsFnMDQT" / Twitter
 

FEBRUARY 10, 2023 TM FORUM WEB SUPPORT

Five minutes with Sharad Sriwastawa, CTO of Rakuten Mobile

https://dtwa.tmforum.org/...en-mobile-on-standing-out-from-the-crowd/  

Presentation of Q4/2022 und complete 2022 on Seeking Alpha

https://twitter.com/RobinWuzz/status/1627056911441965056  

Feb 15th, 11:36am Investing.com 4755

https://finbox.com/TSE:4755  

4 days ago — HSBC analyst Neale Anderson reiterated a Buy rating and JPY900.00 price target on Rakuten Inc. (4755:JP) (OTC: RKUNF)

https://www.reddit.com/r/RakutenUndervalued/...osting_about_rakutens/
 

The definitive report on Open RAN: Annual Industry Survey 2022

February 16, 2023

In recent years, Open RAN has undoubtedly become one of the hottest topics in telco. And at the forefront of this conversation is Rakuten Symphony. Together with Rakuten Mobile, we have deployed the world’s first and largest end-to-end cloud-native network, providing coverage to over 300,000 cells managed by a team of just 250 professionals. According to a 2022 study from Umlaut, the network is one of the highest performing among 14 metropolitan areas globally. So is now the time for the industry to take an open interface cloud-native approach to telecoms?

Rakuten Symphony recently participated in Telecom.com’s Annual Industry Survey to understand perspectives on Open RAN. The report at large provides detailed high-level insights from operators, vendors and system integrators from Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. The full report covers seven specific areas affecting telecoms today: 5G, Digital Transformation, BSS Monetization, Broadband Service Management, Video, IoT and Open RAN.

https://symphony.rakuten.com/blog/...-ran-annual-industry-survey-2022